#KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC SERIES#

Tusken Raiders are hassling the locals and you need a hunting licence to find a piece of ancient star map that leads to MalakвЂ™s secret base, the legendary Star Forge. The choices that define whether youвЂ™re a Jedi or Sith in KOTOR are also laughably lacking in subtlety. Unlike Mass Effect or Dragon Age, the very make up of reality in Star Wars is fuelled by a tug of war between forces of good and evil.

#KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC SERIES#

No series in BioWareвЂ™s catalogue has been more tailormade for this sort of dichotomy. In its signature style, BioWare built Knights Of The Old Republic around a cavalcade of binary choices, letting you decide what kind of Force user you want to be: a patient, noble Jedi or an inveterate dick of a Sith. Whether you become a Jedi or a Sith Lord is up to you, though. When the three of you escape the ship, thus begins your journey to punch Malak right in his funky jaw box, stop the Sith from ruling the galaxy, and inevitably find yourself becoming the most potent user of the Force around. Carth, the gameвЂ™s white-bread soldier type, gets you caught up on your way to save Jedi heroine Bastilla. Later, naturally, youвЂ™re revealed to be a powerful Force vessel, but at the start, youвЂ™re just a hapless amnesiac waking up on a Republic ship besieged by a Darth MalakвЂ™s Sith fleet. While youвЂ™re not a teenage moisture farmer or a strangely healthy slave boy, KOTOR does place you in the role of a seemingly innocent bystander caught up in the struggle between light and dark. Evil is much more fun, says the ending of Knights Of The Old Republic, the rare game whose alternate conclusions demonstrate that the вЂњrightвЂќ decision isnвЂ™t the one youвЂ™ll necessarily enjoy the most.

Play to the end, and it makes a bold, unexpected statement: Being good is dumb. Thanks to its unusual exploration of that war between light and dark, though, it ends in a dramatically different place than the Star Wars movies. All of itвЂ™s set against the backdrop of a power struggle between good and evil, Jedi against Sith, with you smack in the middle.

There are thrilling spaceship escapes from planets patrolled by bad soldiers in shiny helmets, shady deals with grotesque slug mobsters, and even races in dangerous hovering vehicles. Surviving your space adventure requires the help of a Wookiee with a life debt to a thief, a small robot that beeps, and a tall comic-relief robot. ThereвЂ™s the Jedi training montage with a frog man. Even though itвЂ™s set a few thousand years before Anakin Skywalker has to inexplicably race a pod while enduring the squeals of Two-Headed Greg Proops, it still runs through many of the same motions as the movies.

Knights of the old republic